Building permit analysis sheds light on how much Amazon has spent on massive Seattle footprint

The Day One building and Spheres represent the biggest Amazon building permits for an individual project. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include official data on capital investments from Amazon’s HQ2 website.

As Amazon parses applications from 238 municipalities for its second North American headquarters, a new analysis delves into the billions of dollars Amazon has spent on building permits to construct its Seattle campus and which projects it estimated it would put the most money into.

Construction information company BuildZoom looked at building permits for 45 structures totaling 13.6 million square feet that Amazon has either bought, built or leased in the last decade. The analysis found that Amazon has accounted for $1.9 billion in building permits over the last 10 years.

On a website dedicated to HQ2, Amazon disclosed that it spent $3.7 billion from 2010 to last summer on capital investments, including buildings and infrastructure. The company dropped an additional $1.4 billion on operational expenditures such as utilities and maintenance.

Building permits are not an exact measure of a project’s cost and tend to undervalue the total price tag, but they give a window into how much the company expects to spend building by building. The values represent a cost estimate for permitting purposes and don’t reflect major changes throughout the construction process.

The analysis shows that Amazon’s largest building permit is valued at more than $653 million, and that is for Block 19, which includes the new Day One Tower and the iconic triumvirate of Spheres.

The analysis does not account for the full scope of the fourth and fifth blocks of office buildings for the new campus in Seattle’s Denny Triangle neighborhood. The analysis also doesn’t include permits for some of its biggest leases, including the 722,000-square-foot Rainier Square deal, and the nearly 500,000-square-foot space above the downtown Seattle Macy’s store.

Here is a map of Amazon’s permits in the Seattle area and individual building permit values:

This map details Amazon’s footprint and the value of each building permit. (BuildZoom Photo)

As Amazon prepares to set up its second North American headquarters, the real estate scene is keeping a keen eye on the company’s growth in Seattle. Will it slow down or stop entirely, or is Amazon just as bullish on its original home?

So far, the evidence points to the latter. BuildZoom’s analysis shows that this year alone Amazon has leased or been linked to five office buildings totaling more than 1.8 million square feet.

Amazon just this week released new images of the fifth block of its Denny Triangle concept, designed with an “urban treehouse.” The third and fourth blocks of the campus are under construction now.

Nat Levy is a staff reporter at Geekwire covering a variety of technology topics, including Microsoft, Amazon, tech startups, and the intersection of technology with real estate, courts and government. Contact him at nat@geekwire.com and follow him on Twitter at @natjlevy.